Slay didn’t remember much about his descent into the undercity. Maybe he’d passed through here before, but he’d been weak and starved, tortured past his body’s ability to heal. Everything was dim and patchy—simply different shades of pain and suffering broken up by long stretches in the box—until the day he met Ro. Then their time together gleamed like gold, every moment clear as a bell.
He couldn’t understand a word the Gols were saying. To him it was noise, but he trusted that Rowena would keep the war effort on track, so he padded away, giving the vanguard room to work. They lined up three strong and ran at the doors with full force. The first hit cracked the heavy wood, but it sounded like there were metal fortifications on the other side. Without flagging, the door breakers charged again and again, each time making the barrier wobble a little more. The resistance had no explosives, no heavy weapons, only brute force and determination. When three of the biggest couldn’t shatter the blockade, two more stepped up.
Four more charges.
Five.
On the sixth strike, a sharp crack and pop sounded, then the massive gates tumbled forward, wood and metal fissuring wide. The resistance pushed past the breach with Slay near the front. He was faster and more agile than most, able to dart through the gaps until he made it past the door breakers leading the charge.
A minimal force awaited them, no more than thirty. Even so, they were Elites, and the battle began in earnest. Slay tore into them with a fury that he’d corralled for too long. He lashed out with teeth and claws, tearing hamstrings and crippling where he could. Most Animari couldn’t penetrate armored Golgoth hide in their changed forms, but he had a bite powerful enough to clamp down and break through scale and bone.
Slay gloried in his own unleashed ferocity, giving no quarter and asking none. His mouth filled with blood as the air rang with the guttural cries of the enemy. More and more resistance fighters broke from the open wound that had been their prison, even knocking stones loose from the mortar in their fierce charge. Rowena was a dark blur overhead, diving to assist those that were struggling. If he let himself, he could get lost in the beauty of her circling strikes. Often she carried a target with her, soaring high only to release them and let gravity smash them into bloody pulp. Since he didn’t need to worry about her safety, he fought like a devil from the depths of hell, determined to inflict twice as much pain as he’d received from his captors.
Chunks of meat tore free as he ripped into his next target, and he relished each agonized groan. This is for taking me. This is for torturing me. It mattered not at all that these weren’t the same Gols who’d snatched him up outside Ash Valley. Slay took this one down, then another, vicious as only a cat could be. In the fray he took glancing wounds, ripped through dense layers of fur and muscle but his accelerated healing soon mended the damage.
He fell into the violence like a bottomless pool and swam until there was only pain and savagery, the churning wildness of his heart and the burn of his lungs as he raced here and there. Today, Slay lived up to his name.
In the aftermath, he stood amid the bloody carnage. The resistance lost some, but more were still stumbling out from the broken doors, ready to fill out the ranks of Chantisse’s army.
It wasn’t good that he felt so exhausted already, as they’d barely begun to fight. To save energy, Slay slid back into human form, a naked man crouched on his hands and knees, liberally smeared with the blood of his foes. Others followed his lead. They needed to conserve the strength they’d mustered. Rowena landed beside him and resumed the form he knew best.
Her fair hair was slicked red, and her skin showed crimson spatters from head to toe. Yet she planted her feet firmly and called out, “Find provisions. Food. Clothing. We’ll hold here until everyone emerges from the undercity. Nobody will be left behind.”
Chantisse arrived in the next wave, too valuable to risk in the first assault. She commenced giving orders and soon a makeshift camp sprang up. Though they hadn’t yet reached the heart of Golgerra, they were one step closer. Slay took stock of his surroundings for the first time. Golgerra had made no impression on him before, but now he could admit that it was a staggering architectural achievement with towering spires and lights glowing above like tiny miniature suns. The city-within-the-mountain seemed to him like a place out of a child’s storybook, where magic might be real and dragons might lurk in dark and secret lairs.
Ro paused beside him, leaning against his side with a weary breath as she followed his gaze to the dizzying heights of an impossible ceiling. “It’s magnificent, isn’t it? Sometimes when the tyrant summoned me, I tried to memorize everything so I could share the beauty secondhand with those who might never get to see it with their own eyes.”
Wrapping his arm around her shoulders, Slay said, “How much did you remember?”
“Not enough,” she answered quietly.
“It shouldn’t be this lovely,” Maksim said then.
Slay hadn’t noticed the cook standing nearby, but when the man spoke, his voice trembled. Maksim’s eyes glittered with tears as he took in the resplendence his own hard labor had paid for, a magnificence he had never been invited to share. Nor would his children ever have set foot here either, if not for the resistance. With her customary kindness, Ro reached out and squeezed Maksim’s shoulder in comfort, receiving a grateful glance in return. Slay loved that about her; no matter how tired she was, she always had the heart to help someone else.
“We’ve taken this ground,” Chantisse called. “Now we must hold it. And when we’re strong enough, we’ll push deeper into the city. They will likely send forces against us. We shall meet them with unfaltering will and deadly force. No surrender! No quarter!”
“No surrender,” the rebels shouted. “No quarter!”
Just then the radio crackled to life. It was the first time the thing had activated and Slay didn’t know if the thickness of the walls had blocked the signal or if none of the guards had been broadcasting until this moment. All the voices fell silent.
“We have breach! All hands to the exterior gates. Prince Alastor’s forces will be inside the city soon. Repeat, all soldiers to the front!”
Rowena let out a giddy scream and hugged Slay so hard that his neck popped. “Did you hear that? He’s come for us. He didn’t forget his promise!”
Chantisse inclined her head in regal fashion. “I heard. We’ll pause here to rest, then continue the push. Those bastards will be so busy fighting him that they’ll never see us coming from behind. And we’ll destroy them in the middle.”
Slay wasn’t a strategist, but even he could predict the conclusion.
19.
The break that Chantisse had promised didn’t pan out.
Just as people stopped streaming out from the undercity—with some inevitably lost to rising flood waters or trampled underfoot by those infected with panicked urgency—another wave of Elites appeared on the edge of the lowest tier, blocking progress to Golgerra proper. Fifty this time, more than they’d fought in the first battle, but the resistance had more bodies now too. Most were tired and full of uncertainty, but Rowena didn’t let that feeling take root.
She spotted Lucan at the head of the phalanx and raised her voice to carry. “Look, it’s a coward and a traitor, come to pay the price for his crimes!”